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I don't know, in a time where it's meta-everything and we're all trying so hard to uniform and share as much as possible between applications, and transparently abstract all of this from the less technical users, further fragmentation sounds like swimming upstream to me.
If the problem is MRay's identity being too strong in XSI (which is disagree with these days given how passes/rendering have been revamped) then it's one thing, but having a unified interface with access to, at least on the surface, the same library with the same behaviours is a positive thing to me when I look at it from the non technical user perspective.
More meta-shaders and additional nodes might be closer to what some people really want but don't know it yet.
I can't say I find the arguments for completely parallel workflows very appealing, and without wanting to question how much thought people put into it, it doesn't seem like from a design standpoint all the long-term implications have been considered. It's scarily reminiscent of the way 3dsmax works, and I think I'd probably chew my mouse arm free of the chain that links me to my desk rather than using anything that plays like max.
On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Frantisek Hradecky < franta(at)upp.cz> wrote:
I also think that way of inheriting properties from mental ray "exclusive" options (Like aproximation editor, or Shadow options in light properties.) is not the best way how to integrate new render engines into XSI. It could be helpful for beginners, but it could pose some restrictions for users that are already used for example to renderman compliant terminology. I would prefer to have option to have multiple properties or shader trees for different renderers hooked on one object. In this way I could follow the mr-way of doing things and for different passes or element use another renderer without modifying the same options. Actually this is the way Affogato works and how 3Delight is integrated to Maya (except for shader networks). I do agree that for example Softimage base library should be supported and translated, but for other shaders it should be always prefered (in my opinion) to not to try emulate options of mr because the mechanics and results differ. (AO in 3Delight for example).
Francesco.
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